


The question of Gallifreyan-human reproductive modes

by peterlorrecompanion



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 04:12:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4086211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterlorrecompanion/pseuds/peterlorrecompanion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Intercepted email to Osgood at UNIT from a physical anthropologist friend containing speculations about aspects of the Doctor's sexual nature and  "his" relationship with human females.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The question of Gallifreyan-human reproductive modes

To: osgoodiegoodieyumyum@UNIT.gov  
From: bonobobarb@smithsonian.edu  
Subject: Re: The question of Gallifreyan-human reproductive modes

I'm excited and intrigued by the data you've shared with me, though of course any of the inferences I draw from them necessarily remain mere speculation. I understand the diplomatic and ethical barriers that prevent us from a more thorough and satisfying examination of the subject. The fact that we now have two known specimens is even more tantalizing and frustrating in terms of potential research. But I understand the delicacy of the situation and that in terms of realpolitik we will have to satisfy ourselves for now with extrapolating from what little we have, with the help of what little more we do know about terrestrial primate reproductive anatomy and behavior.

I think the most difficult and important aspect of this is for us not to fall into what the English lit profs call "the pathetic fallacy" and view the subject with an anthropomorphic bias. We have to bear in mind that the subject in question does not belong to the species Homo sapiens nor in a taxonomic sense is he what we would classify as a primate. Parallel evolution from an extraterrestrial perspective is a mind-boggling concept that we've barely had a chance to investigate, and when we're dealing with a species that up until very recently we understood to be on the verge of extinction (and may well go extinct at any moment, given our subject's extreme thrill-seeking tendencies) there's a lot of urgent catching up to do. Again, I understand that you can't just ask the man to drop his trousers and give us a look. Perhaps with tact, at the right moment, we can approach him successfully by appealing to his own evident thirst for knowledge to empathize with our need to slake our own.

Much of what we've discussed so far has been along the lines of "if he's got two hearts what else has he got two of?" which isn't getting us anywhere. The idea of purposeful evolution is a fallacy. You only have to look at the grossly inefficient "design" of human reproductive physiology to know that there is no "design" involved, intelligent or otherwise. There is no reason to suppose that just because our Gallifreyan subject presents the secondary sexual characteristics of an adult male Homo sapiens he must possess similar urogenital structures, though I agree with you that the fact that he reacts the same way a male human being would when a hard object is thrown against the area where the external male reproductive organs are usually grouped would indicate there is something there.

Behavior is always a prime indicator and here I think we have more to go on. Although the subject tends to favor serial companionship with nubile human females, there is little evidence (except in the notable case of Amy Pond) that his interactions with them are of what we would interpret as a sexual nature. It's interesting that the subject's current incarnation quickly bonded with the previous incarnation's companion, despite an evident reluctance on the companion's part because of his less nubile appearance (I should say its, but we will use conventional terrestrial binary gender identifiers referring to the subject as "him" for simplicity's sake.) The relationship between the subject's previous incarnation and the companion Clara Oswald seemed to be what you and I might see as a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, but in this instance the relationship between the subject's subsequent incarnation and Clara has reconfigured into that of a father and adult child. I should emphasize that this is just a subjective impression on my part, no doubt an artifact of the anthropomorphic fallacy. It's just as likely that the Doctor and his human companions relate to one another more in the same way that humans relate to domestic cats.

Given the many evident similarities between the Gallifreyan subject and human males and the vital importance of sexual expression in terrestrial primates in all aspects of being--biological, social, psychological and economic--we would naturally expect that there would be at least some occasional expression between our subject and his many companions given the close quarters they keep and the emotionally intense and continually life-threatening experiences they share on a continual basis, but with the one exception of Amy Pond's production of a genetically half-Gallifreyan offspring (the explanation for which given by our Gallifreyan subject is ludicrously unconvincing) we can only speculate as to what has been going on inside the Tardis, away from our deplorably scant opportunities to observe our subject and his companion in action.

I tend to infer that the Gallifreyan-Earth woman companionships have been consistently platonic in nature, and here are a couple of suggestions as to why this may be the case.

a) There may be in Gallifreyan Timelord culture some ethic in force for the Tardis companionship paradigm similar to our own incest taboo, or the prohibition of sexual contact between teacher and student, which creates an unbroachable psychological barrier between our subject and his companions. (I suspect that in the case of Amy Pond the companion devised some way to lower our subject's inhibitions, perhaps by pharmaceutical means, resulting in deliberate or inadvertent insemination.)

b) As I mentioned previously we should bear in mind that unless and until proved otherwise we have no reason to assume the subject's external urogenital structures are similar to those of the typical human male. The subject may have either theoretical or practical knowledge of the unfeasibility or unsatisfactory nature of coitus with the human female. In terms of genetics, he may be aware of potential dangers in a misalliance between Gallifreyan and Homo sapiens and is responsible enough to want to spare both his companions and potential offspring, athough why then does he continues to choose companions who are virtual walking stereotypes of the fertile human female? Perhaps one thing our subject shares with the male of our species is ostentatious status-seeking in terms of what women he's seen with. 

c) We cannot rule out the possibility that given the enormous difference between his regenerative lifespan and our much more limited life expectancy, the subject may simply be wary of engaging in full sexually determined pair bonding with a human female for purely emotional reasons. Think of what it would be like to keep falling in love with men who keep dying two months into the relationship.

There is so much potential here for exploration. I hope we're able to go much, much deeper into this.


End file.
